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Meanderings Over “The Message”

Think about it for a second – what’s this illusive content, this theme, the essence that we in recovery call: “The Message”?

If you go to Amazon.com today and enter addiction, alcoholism over-eating or gambling, you’ll out a list of titles as long as a novel. Yet, there has to beÂ some common denominator – an underlying factor – even in consideration of all of the disciplines and tributaries within that help us try to decipher: “the message.”

With the Christmas Season on the verge, (commercially it arrived at Halloween – “I know” – the mixed message of the season of giving and scaring,……..) I’m reminded of a famous parallel to our message occurring in the form of a Christmas fable – told as a story – they always have a moral lesson; a comparable teaching that assists our search for an illusive understanding,… “the message.”

When Jacob Marley rattles in, (Ebineezer’s Ghost of Christmas Past) clattering his chains of greed, selfishness and complete lack of compassion for his fellow man amidst woeful remorse, he moans his warning to Ebineezer Scrooge: “you await the same fate if you doesn’t change” (‘aye, that he dozzzz….’a host of sightless supporting spirits groan).

Thus, the scene relays a primary part of “the message”: our program of reflection, awareness and inventory can set the stage for we: the hopelessly addicted —- to “change” (‘weÂ sees it as a fundamental aspect of “the Message”, we duzzz…. sez I in ghostly imitation’!)

The message we carry might well be the honest sharing of our Experience and Hopes with another,… that they too might find a way to be free from the slavery and chains of “bondage to their selvezzzz,….” (Okay – enough of the Dickens dialecting).

The Message is possibly: “what price, our freedom from addictions”; those being our somewhat self-imposed prisons of physiological dependence and spiritual toxicity and its release found in complete abstinence, cast in the continual search for our spirit’s emotional balance. It’s located in the displacement of our powerlessness over substance tyranny and our “out of control selves”, placing them in the powerful care of some force we find in our hearts and fellowships, their literature and its practice.

This morning, I went to a meeting where a brand new memberÂ well into his 60’sÂ announced – in that choking voice so often followed by a moment of silence, that — he sought recovery. There and then softly arose from the group that spiritual energy which emanates from the gathering of 25 or so men and women in their common search for recovery; that energy we call the message,….. found within us all. It fills our hearts with courage, hope and Universal Love: the “genuine concern for the common welfare of all.” This message becomes spiritually clear in our feelings, the message commonly sensed without the use of words.

Just as Tiny TimÂ said: “God Bless Us, Every One, however we should find such a force.

There – those are some of my present thoughts on the message: Sober is better than drunk and clean is better than dirty – plug-in the phrase for your own affliction.,….if not booze. The essence of the message is what affect releases its ghostly grip….. and as most of you, I continue to seek it.